Video: Watch: Highlights of the Eurovision Song Contest final 2015 in Vienna - Telegraph Sweden's Mans Zelmerlow won the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna on Sunday, beating Russia and Italy in the world's biggest international music show. The 28-year-old singer and TV presenter, who had been a bookmakers' favourite, performed the winning electro-pop ballad "Heroes," dancing in front of a black screen with animated gnomes. Mans Zelmerloew representing Sweden celebrates winning the final of the 60th annual Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna (Reuters) Sweden has won the 60-year-old competition six times, more than any other nation apart from Ireland. Sweden won most recently in 2012 with "Euphoria" by Loreen and now gets to host the contest again next year. This year's theme was Building Bridges, which many artists interpreted as an appeal for tolerance in performances that included a gay kiss scene by Lithuania.

"We are all heroes no matter who we love, who we are or what we believe in," Zelmerlow told the crowd in Vienna after getting a hug from last year's victor, bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst of Austria. He beat Russia's Polina Gagarina, whose song "A Million Voices" reaped top scores from most former Soviet satellite states that earned angry jeers from the crowd in Austria. Mans Zelmerlow representing Sweden performs the song 'Heroes' (AP) "Please remember that our motto is building bridges and that music should stand over politics tonight," presenter Alice Tumler told the audience. The annual kitsch-fest was watched last year by more than 195 million people in 45 countries, or more viewers than the Super Bowl. This year China broadcast the world's longest running music competition, a fixture in the gay calendar, live for the first time. While viewers are often puzzled by the inclusion of countries outside Europe such as Israel, which qualifies thanks to membership of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), this year the net was cast even wider.

To mark 60 years since the first Eurovision in 1955, Australia was given a wild card entry and singer Guy Sebastian and his up-tempo song "Tonight Again," a big hit with the crowds in Austria, finished fifth. Singer Guy Sebastian (R) representing Australia performs the song "Tonight Again" (Reuters) Eurovision is hugely popular in Australia, where about 3 million people watched it last year, and broadcaster SBS is an associate member of the EBU. Recent hosts have spent an average of 25 million euros on staging the event. But EBU media director Jean Philip de Tender said it was possible to host it for 11 million euros, allowing the host nation to breakeven, meaning even small or cash-strapped countries have a chance. Eurovision: Sweden's Mans Zelmerlow Wins Song Contest - NBC News advertisement VIENNA — Sweden's Mans Zelmerlow won the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna on Sunday, beating Russia and Italy in the world's biggest international music show.

The 28-year-old singer and TV presenter, who had been a bookmakers' favorite, performed the winning electro-pop ballad "Heroes," dancing in front of a black screen with animated gnomes. Sweden has won the 60-year-old competition six times, more than any other nation apart from Ireland. Sweden won most recently in 2012 with "Euphoria" by Loreen and now gets to host the contest again next year. This year's theme was Building Bridges, which many artists interpreted as an appeal for tolerance in performances that included a gay kiss scene by Lithuania. "We are all heroes no matter who we love, who we are or what we believe in," Zelmerlow told the crowd in Vienna after getting a hug from last year's victor, bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst of Austria. He beat Russia's Polina Gagarina, whose song "A Million Voices" reaped top scores from most former Soviet satellite states that earned angry jeers from the crowd in Austria. "Please remember that our motto is building bridges and that music should stand over politics tonight," presenter Alice Tumler told the audience.

The annual kitsch-fest was watched last year by more than 195 million people in 45 countries, or more viewers than the Super Bowl. — Reuters Mans Zelmerlow representing Sweden celebrates as he wins the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Austria's capital Vienna, Sunday, May 24. Kerstin Joensson / AP Sweden's Mans Zelmerlow wins Eurovision Song Contest Sweden's Mans Zelmerlow wins Eurovision Song Contest By Victoria Bryan and Shadia Nasralla Share By Victoria Bryan and Shadia Nasralla VIENNA (Reuters) - Sweden's Mans Zelmerlow won the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna on Sunday, beating Russia and Italy in the world's biggest international music show. The 28-year-old singer and TV presenter, who had been a bookmakers' favourite, performed the winning electro-pop ballad "Heroes," dancing in front of a black screen with animated gnomes. Sweden has won the 60-year-old competition six times, more than any other nation apart from Ireland. Sweden won most recently in 2012 with "Euphoria" by Loreen and now gets to host the contest again next year.

This year's theme was Building Bridges, which many artists interpreted as an appeal for tolerance in performances that included a gay kiss scene by Lithuania. "We are all heroes no matter who we love, who we are or what we believe in," Zelmerlow told the crowd in Vienna after getting a hug from last year's victor, bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst of Austria. He beat Russia's Polina Gagarina, whose song "A Million Voices" reaped top scores from most former Soviet satellite states that earned angry jeers from the crowd in Austria. "Please remember that our motto is building bridges and that music should stand over politics tonight," presenter Alice Tumler told the audience. The annual kitsch-fest was watched last year by more than 195 million people in 45 countries, or more viewers than the Super Bowl. This year China broadcast the world's longest running music competition, a fixture in the gay calendar, live for the first time. Whilst viewers are often puzzled by the inclusion of countries outside Europe such as Israel, which qualifies thanks to membership of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), this year the net was cast even wider.

To mark 60 years since the first Eurovision in 1955, Australia was given a wild card entry and singer Guy Sebastian and his up-tempo song "Tonight Again," a big hit with the crowds in Austria, finished fifth. Eurovision is hugely popular in Australia, where about 3 million people watched it last year, and broadcaster SBS is an associate member of the EBU. Recent hosts have spent an average of 25 million euros ($27.54 million) on staging the event. But EBU media director Jean Philip de Tender said it was possible to host it for 11 million euros, allowing the host nation to breakeven, meaning even small or cash-strapped countries have a chance.

($1 = 0.6457 pounds) (Editing by Janet Lawrence and Marguerita Choy) Reblog Sweden's Zelmerlow wins Eurovision Song Contest Sweden's Zelmerlow wins Eurovision Song Contest Sunday, 24 May 2015 | 1:13 AM ET Reuters SHARES Nigel Treblin | WireImage | Getty Images Mans Zelmerloew of Sweden reacts after winning on stage during the final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2015 on May 23, 2015 in Vienna, Austria. Sweden's Mans Zelmerlow won the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna on Sunday, beating Russia and Italy in the world's biggest international music show. The 28-year-old singer and TV presenter, who had been a bookmakers' favorite, performed the winning electro-pop ballad "Heroes," dancing in front of a black screen with animated gnomes. Sweden has won the 60-year-old competition six times, more than any other nation apart from Ireland. Sweden won most recently in 2012 with "Euphoria" by Loreen and now gets to host the contest again next year.

This year's theme was Building Bridges, which many artists interpreted as an appeal for tolerance in performances that included a gay kiss scene by Lithuania. "We are all heroes no matter who we love, who we are or what we believe in," Zelmerlow told the crowd in Vienna after getting a hug from last year's victor, bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst of Austria. He beat Russia's Polina Gagarina, whose song "A Million Voices" reaped top scores from most former Soviet satellite states that earned angry jeers from the crowd in Austria. "Please remember that our motto is building bridges and that music should stand over politics tonight," presenter Alice Tumler told the audience. The annual kitsch-fest was watched last year by more than 195 million people in 45 countries, or more viewers than the Super Bowl. This year China broadcast the world's longest running music competition, a fixture in the gay calendar, live for the first time. While viewers are often puzzled by the inclusion of countries outside Europe such as Israel, which qualifies thanks to membership of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), this year the net was cast even wider.

To mark 60 years since the first Eurovision in 1955, Australia was given a wild card entry and singer Guy Sebastian and his up-tempo song "Tonight Again," a big hit with the crowds in Austria, finished fifth. Eurovision is hugely popular in Australia, where about 3 million people watched it last year, and broadcaster SBS is an associate member of the EBU. Recent hosts have spent an average of 25 million euros ($27.54 million) on staging the event. But EBU media director Jean Philip de Tender said it was possible to host it for 11 million euros, allowing the host nation to breakeven, meaning even small or cash-strapped countries have a chance. Only Mr. God Knows Why - The New Yorker Only Mr. God Knows Why The meaning of the Eurovision Song Contest. By Anthony Lane A contest, not a fight: opposite, clockwise from top, 2010 contestants representing Lithuania, Serbia, Armenia, and Spain.CreditArt by Jimmy Turrell By any measure, Thursday, May 27th, was an important day for the stability of Europe.

Two decisions, at different ends of the continent, did much to calm the nerves of anyone perturbed by its recent crisis of confidence. In Madrid, the Spanish parliament voted to approve an austerity package, proposed by the ruling Socialist Party, which is designed to cut the country’s budget deficit by fifteen billion euros ($18.4 billion). In Oslo, meanwhile, an eighteen-year-old girl named Sieneke, from the Netherlands, singing “Ik Ben Verliefd (Sha-la-lie),” was voted out at the semifinal stage of the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest. Reaction to both events was swift. The euro rose 1.6 per cent against the dollar, the Spaniards having stanched, for the moment, any spread of Greece’s economic woe to the fifteen other countries—commonly banded together as the eurozone—that have adopted the euro as their currency.

No less dramatically, those of us who cling to Europe as the cradle of the Enlightenment, and who therefore applaud each triumph for probity and justice, went to bed with lighter hearts, knowing that never again, in public, would we have to listen to this: Shalalie shalala Shalalie shalala ik sta d’r ’s morgens mee op. Translated into what one hesitates to call English, this means: Shalalie shalala Shalalie shalala, I can’t get it out of my head Shalalie shalala Shalalie shalala, it’s there when I get up in the morning. In a way, the lines are brutally honest. Trying to get them out of your head is like trying to dislodge an ant that has crawled into your ear canal. That itch has long been a notorious side effect of Eurovision, and anyone who grew up in Europe, as I did, with a television in the house, can never quite shake off the affliction, just as old Africa hands used to suffer malarial twinges for the rest of their lives. The Eurovision Song Contest is pretty much what it says on the label.

It is a singing competition, in Europe, on television. In fact, it is an intra-European affair, held annually among a jostling mass of rival nations. This year, there were thirty-nine countries taking part, including some, such as Turkey or Azerbaijan, that you would not, with atlas in hand, immediately define as European; admission is granted to any willing member of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). There were seventeen countries in each semifinal, plus five that swept straight through to the final, bypassing the quicksand of the semis. One of these is always the host country, in this case Norway; the four others—France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom—go through unchallenged, on the highly artistic ground that their respective broadcasters pour the largest contributions into the coffers of the EBU. Think of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, add a blast of dry ice, and you get the idea. When the first Eurovision Song Contest was held, in Lugano, Switzerland, in 1956, only seven countries took part.

The choice of Switzerland was not a random one; it was the base of the EBU, whose president, Marcel Bezençon, dreamed up the idea of a contest that would not be a fight—a melodic antidote to the blood-soaked, strictly non-singing calamity that had ended a decade before. The EBU still runs the show, and what a show it is, broadcast live to every competing country and beyond; Australia can’t get enough of it, though America has yet to catch the fever. The TV audience for the 2002 final, held in Tallinn, Estonia, was around two hundred million. That’s twice what you get with the average Super Bowl. Singers and groups don’t win the Eurovision Song Contest. Countries do. You are entered by your proud nation, just as a swimmer or a relay squad is entered for the Olympic Games. That said, swimmers tend to be chosen for their stamina and fitness, and relay runners for the dexterity of their handoffs, whereas the criteria that govern the selection of Eurovision contestants seem altogether less exact.

To gaze upon this year’s Bulgarian contender, for instance, was to learn what would have happened to Tintin if he had decided to retrain, in bleached middle age, as an Elvis impersonator. And which choreographer, back in Sofia, had ordained that the presence of two male dancers, writhing around the singer with oiled torsos and what appeared to be shimmering incontinence pants, would truly be in the national interest? More startling yet was a woman named Hera Björk, bellowing for Iceland, who looked like Meat Loaf with a henna rinse. Once she opened her mouth, at the start of “Je Ne Sais Quoi,” what emerged made Meat Loaf sound like Judy Holliday. Afterward, backstage, as if to lend concrete form to the thought that was hovering in all our minds, she held up a model volcano. A unique festivity prevails at Eurovision, laced with both perspiring ambition and dewy innocence. The contenders arrive not just as ambassadors for their homelands but as proven conquerors.

In most countries, there will have been a preliminary subcompetition, the object being to pick the right song, and the right performer, to carry the hopes of the people. This is organized and shown by the TV company that will eventually broadcast the big international night, on a Saturday in the spring. Courtesy of Sveriges Television and Sveriges Radio, for instance, droves of Swedes tune in every year to Melodifestivalen, which goes on for six weeks, through countless rounds, before settling on a winner. In 2009, more than three thousand songs were submitted, before the whittling began; this year, nearly four million viewers saw Anna Bergendahl clinch the nomination, with “This Is My Life.” “Why are you here / With the autumn leaves?” the song inquired. It entered the Swedish charts on March 5th and stayed there for fifteen weeks, including almost a month at No. 1. Bearing her guitar, borne on the good will of her countrymen, and tipped for triumph, Bergendahl arrived in Oslo to seek the grail at the end of this lengthy quest. She went out in the semifinal. A nation mourned.

The contest was held in Oslo because Norway was last year’s victor. That is how the system works. If you’re the life and soul of the evening, the deal is that next time the party is at your place. (Unless you just can’t face it, or can’t afford to stage it, in which case you can palm it off on a friend.) The darling of Moscow, in 2009, had been a lad named Alexander Rybak, representing Norway, who played a fiddle, badly but furiously, and sang a jaunty, content-free composition entitled “Fairytale.” He resembled the smooth-cheeked Brad Pitt, gliding backward through pubescence, in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” and that probably helped. Rybak was born in Belarus, and Russian viewers of “How to Train Your Dragon” will have recognized his voice on the dubbed soundtrack.

(Weirdly, you don’t always need formal ties to the nation that picks you for the contest; when the Cypriots were looking for a singer this year, they searched the Internet and found a Welshman.) Rybak was European youth incarnate, which may be why he helped Norway to earn the highest score in Eurovision history; and that, in turn, is why, a year later, we found ourselves in a humongous, mesh-covered gray pod called the Telenor Arena, in the western outskirts of Oslo, already musing on the future. There was much talk, as Saturday’s final approached, of Azerbaijan coming out on top: not just because its entry, “Drip Drop,” delivered by the energetic Safura, sported the most mystifying line, in English, of the whole competition (“You smell like lipstick”) but because of what victory would mean. Imagine the valedictory shout: Roll on, 2011! See you in Baku! Real Eurovisionistas disdain the idea of simply watching the contest on television. Most countries have a Eurovision Fan Club, whose members criss-cross the continent, every year, in a bid to smell the lipstick in person.

You can spot them, from afar, by their plumage; I was nearly struck blind by a party of six Dutch devotees, who had come to lend moral support to Sieneke. One man wore an orange Stetson, orange being the royal hue of the Netherlands. (You see it on every soccer fan.) Two of his fellow-burghers sported furry orange leggings, like cutoff moon boots, and round spectacles with orange frames. Along the top of each frame were plastic teardrops in red, white, and blue—the colors of the Dutch flag, also glimpsed at the tips of their feather boas. Next year, they should really make the effort to dress up. “It’s true—we totally have the best religion!” Buy a cartoon Eurovision loyalty does not come cheap. On top of the travel and hotel costs, a ticket for this year’s final cost as much as sixteen hundred kroner, or two hundred and fifty dollars, and that’s if you can lay your hands on one. Being a member of the press was no help, and I resorted to putting up a begging notice. Half a day later, my cell phone rang. “Hello, this is Tony, from Norway,” a voice said.

Tony explained that he had a spare ticket, and I asked where he had got it. “Well,” he said, sounding bright and excited, “I had two, but then my wife died, and now I have one free!” The mission of Eurovision is to bring the nations of Europe together in harmony. And the effect of the singing, little of which could be described as harmonious, is to pull them apart. This year’s Greek performers, for instance, drew a delirious reaction from the thousands in the Telenor Arena, who, far from chastising Greece for its financial malpractice, roared in superheated solidarity. (Most of them, I guess, would say that, somehow, it was all America’s fault.) If anything held the Greeks back from this year’s prize, it was their defiant, old-school decision to sing in Greek. From 1966 to 1972, the rule was that you had to compete in the language, or languages, of the country you had been chosen to represent. That rule was reinstated in 1977 and held sway for twenty years, and many acts still voluntarily cleave to it.

I spoke to Olen Cesari, a hedge-haired Albanian violinist who has worked frequently in America (“You know Pharrell Williams?”) and now lives in Rome. This year, he accompanied his compatriot Juliana Pasha in her English-language performance of “It’s All About You.” “Europe has a problem: it’s not the United States,” Cesari said, in words that would make the Eurovision creators quiver with dismay. He added, “So, if you don’t speak English, you’re immediately at a disadvantage. The Greek guys? Good song, but it’s in Greek. Will they play that on the radio in France?” Cesari is right: of the songs that have reached the finals over the years, two hundred and sixty-three have been in English, the lingua franca of pop. French, with a hundred and fifty, is the only other language in triple figures; the rest lag far behind.

On the one hand, the contest is an obvious chance for European nations, especially the less prominent ones, to flaunt their wares by singing in their native tongue, although that’s no help if you happen to be Switzerland, say, whose tongues could hold a contest of their own; one Swiss entry was in Romansh. On the other hand, when you sing in English, you may be blasting through the language barrier to reach a wider audience, but are you not abasing yourself before the Anglo-American cultural hegemony that the competition is clearly designed to rebuff? There is, of course, a middle way, as taken by the Israeli-born Carmela Corren, who sang for Austria in 1966, and changed gear from German to English halfway through “Vielleicht Geschieht ein Wunder” (“Maybe a Miracle Will Happen”).

Historians of Eurovision argue that the miracle had been waiting to happen ever since the same country dispatched Bob Martin—again, not the most wistfully Viennese of names—to the competition in 1957, with his bottom-ranking ballad “Wohin, Kleines Pony.” The language of lyrics is, in short, a booby trap, and there are three well-established methods for avoiding it. One is to be France, whose performers, as you would hope, grind away in French, year after year, repelling all intruders, giving only the barest hint that other languages, let alone other civilizations, even exist; their man in Oslo, Jessy Matador (possibly not his real name), delivered a song called “Allez Olla Olé,” which is as close as France will ever come to hedging its bets. The second method is to be Ireland, the nation that has won the contest more often than any other. Seven times it has struck gold, and no wonder; if you can sing in English without actually being English—all the technical advantages without the shameful imperialist baggage—you’re halfway to the podium already.

(Its 1990 hopeful, Liam Reilly, tried to boost his luck with a blatant currying of favor: “Meet me in Paris on a Champs-Elysées night / We could be in Rome, ’neath a Trevi fountain light,” he warbled. Unfortunately, he missed the first rehearsal when his flight from Dublin was delayed. The song was called “Somewhere in Europe.”) The third method, which is by far the most popular, and which has brought mirthful pleasure to millions on an annual basis, is to sing in Eurovision English: an exquisite tongue, spoken nowhere else, which raises the poetry of heartfelt but absolute nonsense to a level of which Lewis Carroll could only have dreamed.

The Swedes are predictably fluent in this (“Your breasts are like swallows a-nesting,” they sang in 1973), and the Finns, too, should be hailed as early masters, with their faintly troubling back-to-back efforts from the mid-seventies, “Old Man Fiddle” and “Pump-pump,” but the habit continued to flourish even during those periods when the home-language ruling was in place, as cunning lyricists broke the embargo by smuggling random expostulations into their titles and choruses. Hence such gems as Austria’s “Boom Boom Boomerang,” from 1977 (not to be confused with Denmark’s “Boom Boom,” of the following year), Portugal’s “Bem-bom,” from 1982, and Sweden’s “Diggi-loo Diggi-ley,” which won in 1984. The next year’s contenders, spurred by such bravado, responded with “Magic, Oh Magic” (Italy) and “Piano Piano” (Switzerland). Not that the host nation relinquished the crown without a fight, as anyone who watched Kikki Danielsson can attest.

Her song was called “Bra Vibrationer.” It was, regrettably, in Swedish. By and large, philologists date the golden age of gibberish from the collapse of the Communist bloc. This brought a surge of fresh, unjaded contestants into the fray, hitherto unexposed to the watching world and avid to make their mark. (Of the thirty-nine contenders this year, eighteen did not exist as independent entities when the contest was first held.) I tried to interview Alyosha, who was in Oslo to sing “Sweet People,” for Ukraine, and hit a wall. She could learn English phonetically, and howl it convincingly into a wind machine, but speaking it one-on-one was another matter. Run your eye down the first semifinal of 2008, and you find what Donald Rumsfeld used to call Old Europe being gate-crashed, in style, by Ukraine (“Shady Lady”), Latvia (“Wolves of the Sea”), Lithuania (“Nomads in the Night”), Bulgaria (“DJ, Take Me Away”), and Belarus (the ambitious “Hasta La Vista”). How could veterans like Turkey (“Deli”) or Switzerland (“Era Stupendo”) compare with that?

My overriding concern, of course, was that 2010 would mark a hiatus of calm and common sense in this ritual massacre of the English language. I needn’t have worried. From the moment that Aisha took to the stage, for Latvia, in the first semifinal, with a hostage-to-fortune special called “What For?,” I settled down to enjoy a vintage year: I’ve asked my Uncle Joe But he can’t speak Why does the wind still blow? And blood still leaks? What for do people live until they die? That is a good question. And even better was Aisha’s answer: Only Mr. God knows why (But) His phone today is out of range. It was set to be one of those perfect nights, in fact, well before Aisha arrived. As the Telenor Arena filled up, screens above our heads flashed greetings in a Pentecostal rush of different tongues: Pac Fat! Edu! Xewqat sbieh!

(The latter is how you say “Good luck” in Malta, and, for all I know, in Middle-earth.) To the inexpressible joy of the audience, a tribute band—not in the first flush of youth, and schooled, one suspects, in the rigorous schedules of the cruise liner—warmed us up with a medley of old Eurovision winners. And, to my consuming horror, I realized that I knew them all, even in cover versions. I have long since forgotten the lengths of European rivers, and I can no longer recite my periodic table, but the chorus of “Ding Dinge Dong,” as sung by Teach-In, representing the Netherlands, in 1975—“Ding-a-dong every hour, / When you’re picking flowers, / Even when your lover is gone, gone, gone”—remains, as Teach-In would say, daisy-fresh in my mind. Sometimes, the human brain can be a dungeon. The warming up did not end there. A bustling presenter from Norwegian TV, Anne Lindmo, marched on and told us how to behave when the broadcast began.

“Are you ready to share the moment?” she asked, deftly wielding the chosen catchphrase of Eurovision 2010. “There are some people in the first row who are about to burst,” she said. “They are actually cracking.” Lindmo was in even spunkier form during the second semifinal, when she warned us of the camera boom that would swing low, inches above our heads. “This big motherfucker is very dangerous!” she said, showing a command of English more decisive than anything the contestants could muster. If I didn’t know better, I would have said that she’d had a slug of akevitt backstage. “I don’t remember him or the meal or what movie we saw. All I remember is I wore the right jeans.” Buy a cartoon Not a bad idea. Whether you’re presenting, performing, attending, or watching at home, alcohol is essential for getting through the Eurovision Song Contest, and the Norwegian pils served at the concession stands, as weak as fizzy rain, was simply not up to the job.

How else could one face an opening band, from Moldova, who rhymed “We have no progressive future!” with “I know your lying nature!,” and who had taken pains to insure that their violinist’s illuminated bow matched the bright-blue straps of the lead singer’s garter belt? A deranged Estonian pianist smacked his keyboard with one raised fist, like a butcher flattening an escalope of veal. A pair of ice-white blondes, one with a squeezebox, decided to revive the moribund tradition of oompah-pah—or presumably, since they were Finnish, oom-päa-päa. A Belgian boy came on to croon “Me and My Guitar,” otherwise known as “Him and His Crippling Delusion.” Three female singers from Belarus sprouted wings for the final chorus of “Butterflies.” A smirking Serb of indeterminate gender, wearing a tailcoat, sang flat, hiccupping now and then for dramatic effect.

Order was at first restored by Marcin Mrozinski, from Poland, who was backed by five demure women in national dress, and then destroyed as two of the women tore the white blouse off a third, to reveal a sort of peasant boob tube. An old Eurovision trick, this: the mid-song strip, timed to coincide with musical fatigue. It was pioneered by Bucks Fizz, from the United Kingdom, in 1981, when two boys tugged the long skirts off two girls (who wore shorter skirts beneath), and was brought to a neoclassical climax by the Macedonian singer Karolina, in 2002, who removed the top of her ball gown. Below was a molded gold breastplate. That, at any rate, remained the most thoughtful act of disrobing until the start of the second semifinal this year, in which five Lithuanian lads, known collectively as InCulto, began a song in plaid trousers and ended it in jewel-encrusted micro-shorts.

Not content with going from Lee Trevino to Liberace inside three minutes (the strict time limit for all Eurovision songs), they also instructed us to “Get up and dance to our Eastern European kinda funk!” How sad that “kinda” sounds to wiser ears. Lithuania, like Greece (another semi-naked, all-male affair), was an important player this year, because, along with a couple of brazen divas from Ireland and Iceland, it will have secured the loyalty of the gay vote. Without Eurovision’s gay following, the contest—with its reliable deployment of camp, whether sly or unwitting—would be nothing. I spent the final in the company of four gay Frenchmen, one of whom wore jeans, a pressed white shirt, and a fake multicolored mohawk solemnly clamped to his scalp. They cheered patriotically for Jessy Matador, needless to say, but the highlight, as one of them confessed to me afterward, had been the arrival, in the arena, of a real princess—Märtha Louise, the daughter of King Harald of Norway—to wild applause. She was all in pink. “It is Barbie!” my French neighbor said.

Two nights earlier, I had dropped into a club, on Rosenkrantzgate, in downtown Oslo, for the party that followed the second semifinal. Rumors were swirling that some of the singers might be there, but there was no sight of them. Whether or not the club was usually a gay establishment, it had certainly become one for the occasion. There must have been three hundred male Eurovisioners present, plus four women, one of whom leaned against the bar, swigging from a bottle of pear cider. I asked where she was from. “Finland,” she said. I launched into a stream of commiseration, expressing my regret that the Finnish entrants had been expelled so prematurely from the contest, taking their squeezebox with them. The lonely drinker looked blank. “Eurovision,” I explained. She hadn’t known it was happening in the city that weekend. “So why are you here? What do you do?” I asked. She drew herself up like a duchess and declared, “I am prostitute.” To which the only conceivable response was “Honey, you are in the wrong place.” But maybe, on reflection, she wasn’t.

Even if business would be slow that night, she was enveloped in the good will of an institution that has lasted more than half a century, that has ridden the bumps of fashion, that has harmed nobody and given delight to hundreds of millions. The Eurovision Song Contest is kindly, diverting, flamboyant, efficiently run, and surprisingly tough. In fact, there is only one thing wrong with it. The music. Why did pop music never get as far as Europe? Where did it stop? Jazz reached Paris between the world wars and found a home there, so the French had no excuse for not realizing that serious music could draw a crowd and still break ground.

A brief trawl, however, through “The Eurovision Song Contest: The Official History,” a meticulous survey by John Kennedy O’Connor, suggests a willful infantilism in the French-speaking nations during the early years, with Monaco (“Un Banc, un Arbre, une Rue”), Switzerland (“L’Enfant Que J’Étais”), and Luxembourg (“Pomme, Pomme, Pomme”) joining France (“Oui, Oui, Oui, Oui”) in its refusal to acknowledge that jazz, not to mention rock and roll, was even in the air. O’Connor gamely insists that France Gall, who won for Luxembourg, in 1965, did enough with her “pert performance” to demonstrate that “there was a place for the hip and trendy in the contest after all.” A YouTube clip shows Gall rooted to the spot, missing note after note, as she sings about wax dolls. Très hip. You could say that these nightmares belong to the past, but what is most frightening about Eurovision is its reluctance, even now, to wake up.

That was the most distressing aspect of Sieneke and “Sha-la-lie.” Like a mechanical puppet, she waved her hand—tick, tock—in time with the bounce of the chorus. Behind her, just to ram home the toy-town theme, was a tinkling fairground organ with flashing L.E.D.s and two people dressed and made up as dolls, a man with a drum and a woman tapping a tiny cymbal with a stick. They jerked around like automatons: an act that I remember enjoying when Dick Van Dyke tried it, forty-two years ago, in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” but which has since lost some of its lustre. Embarrassment forced me into the crash position, head between my knees, while around me the Oslo audience swayed along with unfeigned zest. The music that Eurovision honors and enshrines is the music you still hear from one corner of Europe to the other.

“J’Aime la Vie,” which won in 1986, and which was sung by a girl later revealed to have been thirteen, was a hit way beyond its native Belgium, and last year’s “Fairytale” repeated the process, conquering the charts in eight European countries. But here’s the rub: European pop sounds like Eurovision pop even when it’s not from the Eurovision Song Contest. The stuff you hear in the back of Belgian taxis, on German radio, in Sicilian bars, and in the lobbies of Danish hotels: it was all created by the great god of dreck, and Eurovision is his temple. P. J. O’Rourke, surveying the dancing at a club in Warsaw in 1986, deplored what he called “the tragic lack of black people behind the Iron Curtain,” and there is no doubt that, had Motown opened up a branch in, say, Bratislava, Europe would have been a happier landmass. But the want of taste runs deeper than that—deeper, even, than the puzzling way in which pop loses every trace of kick and soul when sung in anything but English.

There is, and should be, something cheesy in all good pop, but what Eurovision delivers is flavorless processed cheese, as if it were produced not by musicians but by a cultural subcommittee of the European Union, convened in a back room in Brussels. It wasn’t that I sat there, in Oslo, longing for the Supremes or the Stranglers or R.E.M. That would have been too much to ask. I was longing for the Bee Gees. At the second semifinal, as one keening power ballad bumped into the next, each obeying the same structure (soft opening moan, thunderous midsection, whispered tailing off), and as the dance numbers resounded to the clatter of drum machines, I more or less drowned in the ceaseless gush of ineptitude—seventeen songs in an hour and fifteen minutes, and not one that you would download except under physical duress. The final act, from Turkey, tried to rough things up with a dab of hard rock, but they sounded like a school band, and the angry stripping robot at the back, who sawed off her own armor in a shower of sparks, missed her cue.

As a pièce de résistance, she was meant to yank off her silver helmet to show her golden tresses, but it fell off early, and she was reduced to holding it up shyly to the cameras, like a little girl showing her parents the cup she just won for Best Handwriting. At this point, a friend who knows his music texted me from London: “Brilliant. It’s like pop never happened.” Buy a cartoon London, of course, was the one place in Europe where pop did happen. And the United Kingdom is the one place that, although it dutifully dishes up dreck of its own when Eurovision comes around, realizes that there are greater gods to serve. Other countries despise the U.K. for this heresy, and believe that it is yet another instance of British xenophobia at its most insolent and thuggish, but what arouses British mirth is not funny foreigners but funny foreign songs, as well as the grave respect in which they are held by the foreigners, who become funny as a result. I asked a man named Seppo, from the seven-hundred-strong Eurovision Fan Club of Norway, what he loved about Eurovision.

“Brotherhood of man,” he said—a slightly ambiguous answer, because that was the name of a British group that entered, and won, the contest in 1976. I tried again. “What does it symbolize?” He thought for a moment. “It goes with my political beliefs. Everybody comes here to be happy.” I mentioned the problems besetting Europe, from the financial slump to fractious border disputes, and he immediately swiped the flat of his hand, fast, up across his brow and into the air. “You mean it all goes over your head?” “Yes.” “Because of Eurovision?” “Yes.” A young Greek man offered an equally sober perspective. “Eurovision is probably more important than any political event going on in Greece,” he said, even as Athens braced itself for further strikes and teargassed riots. He went on, “It’s as big as the World Cup for us.” The British, by contrast, would cheerfully trade five decades of unblemished Eurovision triumph for a place in the quarter-finals of a single soccer World Cup.

In truth, they have not been capable of taking Eurovision seriously since October 5, 1962, when the Beatles released “Love Me Do.” Seven months before, the U.K. contender at Eurovision had been Ronnie Carroll, with “Ring-a-Ding.” He had worn a tuxedo. So had the conductor of the orchestra. The U.K. has won the Eurovision Song Contest five times, and, with every victory, the gulf has widened between the garlanded performance and what the British were hearing at home. 1967, the year in which a barefoot Sandie Shaw had all of Europe bouncing with “Puppet on a String,” was also the year of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Brotherhood of Man carried off the prize in 1976 with “Save Your Kisses for Me,” on the same day that the Sex Pistols played at a London pub, supported by a band called the 101ers, whose lead singer, Joe Strummer, was so inspired by what he saw and felt that night that he became a founding member of the Clash.

In 1981, as half of Bucks Fizz was naughtily ripping the skirts off the other half, you could hear Paul Weller, of the Jam, singing about “A smash of glass and a rumble of boots / An electric train and a ripped-up phone booth.” I had the single; on the B-side was a frantic live version of “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight.” That was no place for Bucks Fizz. Even when the United Kingdom doesn’t win the Eurovision Song Contest, it likes to signal its superiority, or, at any rate, its knowingness, in two distinct ways. The first is its comically plaintive choice of song titles, including “Are You Sure?,” “Rock Bottom,” “Why Do I Always Get It Wrong?,” and, from 2000, the forthright “Don’t Play That Song Again.” The second trick is the choice of television commentator—preferably an Irishman, just to muddy the waters even further. For years, the voice that viewers in Britain heard was that of the radio and TV presenter Terry Wogan.

In Copenhagen in 2001, for example, as Natasja Crone Back and Soren Pilmark, our hosts for the evening, arrived onscreen, Wogan could be heard—in Britain only, thank heavens—bidding us welcome “the Tooth Fairy and Doctor Death.” And so it went on. Wogan was knighted in 2005, presumably for services to light mockery. Last year, he passed the Eurovision baton to his countryman Graham Norton, whose note of skepticism is, if anything, brassier still. He was buttonholed by one of the Norwegian presenters as he sat in his broadcasting box at the Telenor Arena. She graciously asked him how he was doing, and he explained that, thanks to nerves, he hadn’t eaten or drunk all day: “Like an Icelandic wallet, I’m empty.” Immediately, all around, there were boos and hisses—the only ones of the entire Eurovision week. This awful person had referred to something that was not happy! And it was in Europe! Kill the beast! At the end of the evening, the United Kingdom came last.

To aficionados, the voting at the Eurovision Song Contest offers even more to savor than the songs. You can’t vote for your own country, but you can vote for any other; the format does not bunch countries into official regional groups, although you wouldn’t guess as much from the farce that invariably unfolds. The hosts are patched through to the capital of each country in turn, where a grinning local announcer is ready with his or her nation’s choice, which is split between a professional jury and phone-in viewers. A typical exchange, this year, proceeded as follows. Oslo called Tbilisi: “The next country to give their vote is Georgia. Good evening!” Tbilisi: “Hello, Norway! Good evening, Europe! This is Georgia calling! First of all, thank you for a fantastic show, it was really amazing!” It is never not amazing. Georgia then awarded points, in ascending order, to its favorite songs of the night: Azerbaijan, eight points; Armenia, ten points; and, top of the list (after a breathless pause), Belarus, with twelve points. What neutral viewers require, at this juncture, is not an ear for music. They need a map.

Georgia abuts Armenia and Azerbaijan. It also nestles against Russia, but, after that unfortunate misunderstanding in South Ossetia, Georgia obviously couldn’t vote for Russia in the Eurovision Song Contest. Whereas Belarus has a long, porous border with Russia, just like Georgia’s, so a vote for Belarus’s exquisite song (“We are so fragile, / Just like melting snow”) would send a strong, twofold signal to Moscow that Tbilisi would not, unlike snow, be melting anytime soon. Russia itself looked due south and bared its teeth: eight points to Azerbaijan, ten to Georgia, and twelve to Armenia. It would be pleasing to think that the Armenian singer, Eva Rivas, had wowed the Russians with her rendition of “Apricot Stone,” at the start of which the Norwegian cameraman was, for all intents and purposes, camping out in her cleavage. This is a woman, after all, who, according to the official program, has already been voted “Golden Voice of Rostov,” “Miss Pearl of Don,” and, with a carefully placed hyphen, “Vice-Miss of the Caucasus.” But all we could hear, in the Russian vote, was the synchronized rattle of sabres.

And there was I, thinking it was all about the songs. The voting system at Eurovision is so infused and corrupted by ethnic and political suckup that nobody, except the organizers and a hundred million viewers, lends any credence to the result. This year, for the first time, the organizers threw in the towel by permitting telephone voting to start before the singing began, thus giving national prejudice the maximum space in which to go on the rampage. The results are not hard to predict. It is a matter of tradition, almost of pride, that Cyprus awards its twelve points to Greece; they would give twelve points to Greece even if the Greek entry consisted of an elderly Cretan slapping an octopus against the side of a wharf. Recent obligations also play a part; Greece itself received twelve points from Germany this year, which was Germany’s way of saying sorry for bailing out the Greek economy to the tune of only twenty-eight billion dollars. So much nicer to say it with a song. Outside the arena, I spoke to Marion, the mother of Thea Garrett, who was singing “My Dream,” for Malta. Could she, perhaps, become the first Maltese to win at Eurovision? “I do not think so,” Marion said.

She added, ruefully, “We have no neighbors.” Whenever the wheel is rigged, there will always be someone to put some extra spin on it, and that someone is Alf Björnberg, a professor of musicology at the University of Gothenburg, and one of the contributors to a scholarly volume called “A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest.” Björnberg, analyzing the widespread practice of what he calls “buddy voting,” writes: Commentators seem to regard the phenomenon as a manifestation of the inability of unsophisticated citizens of the new European nations to comply with the alleged nominal purpose of the contest: to select the best popular song on the basis of inadequately specified musical-aesthetic criteria. Such patronizing invocation of the autonomy of “the music itself” appears particularly inappropriate in the context of the ESC, with its manifestly dense and multilayered texture of cultural meanings. So that’s why there is no good pop in Europe.

“We’re still not seeing a recovery in housing.” Buy a cartoon What an American viewer, tuning into the Eurovision Song Contest by accident, on a trip to Berlin or Bern, would find most baffling is not the singing, or the voting, or even the question of whether Bruce Springsteen, back home, has adequately specified musical-aesthetic criteria. No, what an American would ask is: Since when did Israel become part of Europe? In fact, Israel, like Turkey, is a mainstay of the contest, by dint of belonging to the European Broadcasting Union. There were knots of travelling Israeli fans in Oslo, with their flag painted on their faces, fully embraced by the group hug of Eurovision, and only a handful of Palestinian protesters across the street from the arena, bearing banners that read “Stop the Ethnic Cleansing of East Jerusalem” and “Occupation: 0 Points.” Israel has won the contest three times, although not all viewers have been fully aware of this glory. In the mid-nineteen-seventies, audiences for Eurovision were more than four hundred million strong, with Africa and the Middle East finding the lure irresistible.

This posed a dilemma for Arab nations that did not recognize the official existence of the state of Israel; in 1978, Jordanian broadcasters cut suavely to a commercial break during the Israeli song, with its flawlessly Eurovisionist title of “A-Ba-Ni-Bi,” only for Israel to trump them by going on to win. It was the sort of problem that Bertrand Russell used to relish: Can I win a race if I am not? In the event, the Jordanians did the manly, sensible thing, and closed their transmission with a charming image of daffodils, instead of Jews. Even now, there are Jordanians who think that Belgium, the runner-up that year, was the actual victor, just as there is a furious woman still standing ’neath the Trevi fountain waiting for the singer of “Somewhere in Europe” to show up. The Israelis then went one better in 1998, in Birmingham, England, by nominating a transsexual named Dana.

Though scarcely touched with the gift of song, and sadly lacking the blessing of the Orthodox community in Jerusalem, she sailed through on chutzpah alone, and Eurovision wonks are still disappointed that the super-tolerant glee that she engendered, across the Continent, could not have been extended farther east. Why not let Syria in? Why not Hamas? Given the choice between lobbing missiles at your next-door neighbors and matching their disco beat, hook for hook, while also outstripping them with yards of removable crushed velvet, which way would you swing? Imagine the whole world, listening in: “What for are we singing? / Only Mr. God knows why. / (And) our rockets today are out of range.” This year’s winner of the Eurovision Song Contest was, in her own way, the most perplexing of all. Her name was Lena, she was nineteen, and she came from Germany. She was not a transsexual. She was dressed neither as a clown nor as a gladiator. No musclemen capered in her wake. Not a ghost of dry ice steamed around her feet. She wore a little black dress, black tights, and heels.

She sang a friendly, hook-heavy number called “Satellite,” swaying along as you do in your own kitchen when something catchy comes on the radio. The lyrics were in English, but they were written by John Gordon, who is Danish, and Julie Frost, who is American, so, apart from a line about blue underwear, there was alarmingly little to be ashamed of. In short, this was the first time in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest that any song has reached out and planted so much as a toe in the country known as cool. Obviously, this cannot be allowed. If Eurovision were to conjure, on any regular basis, the kind of music that you can hear without wanting to staple your ears shut, the contest would lose its raison d’être. From the start, it has been goaded by the principle of the cuckoo clock, as explained by Orson Welles in “The Third Man.” Having pointed out that the great achievements of the Italian Renaissance were born from strife and bloodshed, Welles continues, “In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” That is the clock that ticks through Eurovision.

It reassures us with a ringing message: the worse the songs, the more lasting and secure the peace will be. It chimes in the performances of a figure like Michael von der Heide, this year’s voice of Switzerland: a whippet-thin elf who strutted in satin, and in vain, around the Norwegian stage. According to the program, Michael “performs in French, German, Swiss German, English, or Italian and mixes pop, jazz, folk and rock with traditional French chanson. Michael seems to move with ease through all these types of music.” The operative word here is “seems.” The song he gave us, “Il Pleut de l’Or,” or “It’s Raining Gold,” was unspeakable. But if we must gaze, aghast, upon such antics—if Eurovision has given us fifty-five years of solid kitsch—then that, surely, is a small price to pay for the immeasurable privilege of seeing the peoples of Europe emerge from their long history of antipathy and aggression.

The Thirty Years War, starting in 1618, involved combatants such as Sweden, France, Denmark, Hungary, Croatia, Austria, England, Brandenburg-Prussia, and the Ottoman Empire; populations in some central states were almost halved by cruelty, famine, and disease. The Eurovision Song Contest has endured almost twice as long, and no one should pretend that, during its reign, there have not been portions of the Continent mired in conflict; yet even they tend to be ushered back, all sins forgiven, into the bosom of the Eurovision family. Serbia and Montenegro, for instance, entering jointly for the first time, in 2004, came second in the final. They themselves, as you would expect, gave twelve points to Macedonia, but, voting habits aside, the contest goes to ludicrous lengths to protect itself from any storms that rage in the greater world beyond. Inside the bunker, what’s the worst that can happen? Probably the Estonian girl band that performed “Cool Vibes” for Switzerland under the name Vanilla Ninja, in 2005. Three minutes of misery, yes, but nobody died.

The best thing that has happened to the Eurovision Song Contest, as its devotees will remind anyone who dares to question its merits, is Abba. The band won with “Waterloo,” in 1974, and went on to rule the world. Somehow, they took all the ingredients of classic Eurovision—meaningless English words, infuriating chugs in the rhythm, outfits that made your eyeballs hurt—and cooked up something both risible and delectable. It should have been like that every year, and some fans, with a straight face, will claim that it is, pointing to the bliss that was 1988, when Switzerland—in a beautiful gesture toward global, rather than merely European, harmony—took a song co-written by a Turk and gave it to a French-Canadian wearing an unusual combination of double-breasted white jacket and matching puffball skirt. She looked like a naval officer trying to mate with a lampshade. She won by a single vote, and took her place among the immortals. Her name was Céline Dion. ♦ Anthony Lane has been a film critic for The New Yorker since 1993.

Eurovision Song Contest Irish Entries - YouTube Eurovision Song Contest Irish Entries 24,345 views Last updated on Jun 16, 2015 Ireland is the most successful country in the Eurovision Song Contest. They first took part in the 1965 Contest in Naples, participating in every subsequent Contest but two: the 1983 Contest in Munich and the 2002 Contest in Tallinn.Ireland won the Contest for the first time in 1970 with Dana performing &quot;All Kinds of Everything&quot;. In total, Ireland has won the Contest seven times, more than any other country, including an unprecedented three consecutive victories in the 1990s (1992, 1993 and 1994 - the most consecutive wins accumulated by a country to date). The decade also saw yet another victory in 1996 and two second place finishes (in 1990, 1997) which gives Ireland the best overall performance by any country in the history of the Contest. less Ireland is the most successful country in the Eurovision Song Contest.

They first took part in the 1965 Contest in Naples, participating in every subsequent Contest but two: the 1983 Contest in Munich and the 2002 Contest in Tallinn.Ireland won th... more Facts & Figures | Eurovision Song Contest Every year an estimated amount of some 180 million viewers watch the Eurovision Song Contest In 2008 and 2011, a record number of 43 countries participated Ireland has won 7 times, Sweden 6 and Luxembourg, France, and the United Kingdom 5 times. Poland made the most impressive debute in 1994, when Edyta Gorniak came 2nd with To Nie Ja, closely followed by Serbia's victory in 2007. Although Serbia & Montenegro was represented twice before, it was the first time that Serbia took part as an independent country Norway could be found at the bottom of the list as many as eleven times!

The unfortunates came last in 1963, 1969, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1981, 1990, 1997, 2001, 2004 and in the Grand Final of 2012. Nevertheless, they also won thrice (in 1985, 1995 and 2009) In 2001, the largest audience ever attended the Eurovision Song Contest. Almost 38,000 people gathered at Copenhagen's Parken Stadium to witness the first ever Estonian victory. Most winning songs were performed in English - songs (mostly) in English won 26 times. French is also popular, with 14 victories. Dutch and Hebrew songs won 3 times each Six different systems were used over the past decades to pick the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest When Sweden hosted the contest in 2000 and 2013 - it was Denmark that took home the victory. The legends ABBA is the most successful Eurovision Song Contest winner.

The Swedish pop band won the contest in 1974 and has enjoyed phenomenal success ever since The most covered Eurovision Song Contest song is Domenico Mudugno's Nel Blu Di Pinto Di Blu, also known as Volare. The song has been covered by famous stars such as Dean Martin, Cliff Richard, David Bowie and many more In 2014, Valentina Monetta took part for San Marino for the third time in a row and .. qualified for the Final! Johnny Logan won the Eurovision Song Contest three times. In 1980 and 1987 he represented Ireland as performer and won both times, in 1992 he wrote Linda Martin's winning entry Why Me in 2011, Lena , the winner of the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest, decided to defend her title on home ground - something only two people have done in the history of the contest.

Noel Kelehan conducted five winners (1980, 1987, 1992, 1993 and 1996) Dutch conductor Dolf van der Linde conducted for seven different countries (Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland German songwriter and composer Ralph Siegel has taken part 21 times, most lately in 2014 , granting them their first qualification to the Grand Final. He also won the 1982 contest with Ein bißchen Frieden. Only three women conducted the orchestra at the Eurovision Song Contest. Nurit Nirsch conducted the Israeli entries of 1973 and 1978, Monica Dominique conducted the Swedish 1973 entry and Anita KERR appeared in front of the orchestra for Switzerland in 1985 Hosts Måns Zelmerlöw and Petra Mede hosted the two Semi-Finals and Grand Final in 2016. Nostalgia History by year From 1956, when the first ever Eurovision Song Contest took place, to the 2009 contest in Moscow...

Just pick a year from the list to learn more about that particular running, the contestants and more. Each year comes with the relevant scoreboard and loads of background details! HISTORY BY YEAR... History by country Some 50 countries took part in the Eurovision Song Contest over the past 54 years. Find out how each of the participating countries has been doing. Just pick a country from the list and dive into the ups and downs they've all went through. HISTORY BY COUNTRY... History news Eurovision 2015: 30 things you need to know - Telegraph Eurovision 2015: 30 things you need to know Winners, nul pointers, animals and a song called Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley. Rupert Hawksley presents the essential Eurovision facts Eurovision 2014 winner Conchita Wurst Photo: Getty Follow 1) The Eurovision Song Contest was first staged in Switzerland on May 24 1956. This year's final takes place on May 23 in Vienna. It is the 60th contest, and the anniversary show has been titled 'Building Bridges'.

More than 195 million people across the world watched the 2014 contest, which was held in Copenhagen. 2) The songs competing in the grand final are decided in two semi-final shows, taking place on May 19 and 21. Since 2000, the UK, France, Germany and Spain automatically qualify for the Grand Final, as they are the largest financial contributors to the European Broadcasting Union. The automatic finallists were known as the Big Four, but were joined by Italy in 2010 to become the Big Five. This year, Australia will also automatically qualify, as well as hosts Austria. This leaves the remaining 33 entrants to compete for 11 slots in the final. Eurovision 2015: Never mind Electro Velvet, the Aussies are going to win 3) The rules state that the country which won the preceding year's contest must host the event 12 months later; this year’s contest will therefore be held in Vienna, thanks to an historic victory for Conchita Wurst, with 290 points. This is Austria’s first Eurovision win since 1966.

Incase your memory needs refreshing, here’s her winning song, Rise Like a Phoenix: 4) Conchita is the female alter-ego of Thomas Neuwirth. While he hails from rural Austria, Conchita has an entirely separate fictional back-story; she is from the mountains of Colombia, and is married to burlesque star Jacques Patriarque (a real life friend of Neuwirth). 5) Representing the UK in 2015 are peppy duo Electro Velvet, performing the electro-swing number Still In Love With You. Germany’s selection may have been the most fraught, with the winner of the national talent contest (rock singer Andreas Kummert) turning down his place on live TV to a shocked presenter and booing audience. Runner up Ann Sophie will now represent Germany in May. 6) The UK has won five times and come second 15 times. Incredibly, Ireland is the country with the highest number of wins (seven), although, alas, none for Jedward who finished 8th in 2011 and 19th in 2012.

Ireland has fared worse since, with Ryan Dolan winning only 5 points in 2013, and Can-Lin failing even to qualify for the final last year. 7) Between 1999 and 2013, the UK only finished inside the top 10 twice (Jessica Garlick finished 3rd in 2002 and Jade Ewen finished 5th in 2009). Last year, Molly finished 17th with her song Children of the Universe. That’s two places higher than Bonnie Tyler in 2013. 8) While the UK have hardly covered themselves in glory in recent years, spare a thought for poor old Norway, the Eddie the Eagle of Euro pop. They have scored "nul points" more times (four) than any other country in Eurovision history and have come last a record breaking ten times. They have however won more recently than the UK, with Alexander Rybak. If the song title ‘Fairytale’ doesn’t ring any bells, perhaps describing him as the one with the violin will. 9) Songs cannot be longer than three minutes and a maximum of six people are permitted on the stage at any one time for each country.

Animals are strictly banned, as are purely instrumental numbers. 10) Johnny Logan won the Eurovision Song Contest twice (1980 and 1987) and wrote the winning song for Linda Martin in 1992. 11) The UK has hosted the competition five times – in London, Edinburgh, Brighton, Harrogate and Birmingham. 12) There was a four-way tie in 1969 when France, the Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom simply could not be split. 13) Australia will take part in Eurovision for the first time this year . It's inclusion is intended to be a one-off, to celebrate the 60th contest and linking with this year's theme of Building Bridges. Eurovision has had a dedicated cult following in Australia for many years, which has been alluded to in previous broadcasts. They will be represented by former Australian idol winner, Guy Sebastian . Guy also supported Boyzone in 2011.

14) This may be Australia's first year competing, but Australians have taken part in previous years representing other countries: Olivia Newton John represented the UK in 1974, Ireland's two-time winner Johnny Logan, and Gina G (UK, 1996) and Jane Comerford as lead singer of German entry Texas Lightning (2006). Gina G's song 'Ooh Ah, Just a Little Bit' came eighth at eurovision, but topped the UK chart 15) Although Australian participation is a one-off, in the event that Austria wins again, they could return in 2016 and co-host with another European city ... How the time difference would factor in that arrangement remains to be seen. 16) A singer named Ruslana won for Ukraine in 2004 and was later rewarded with a seat in parliament. 17) Spain's cleverly titled, La La La (1968) contained no fewer than 138 'las'... and won.

18) Among the contestants who have gone on to have successful careers are ABBA (1974), Celine Dion (1988), Cliff Richard (1968 and 1973) and Julio Iglesias (1970). Here's Cliff crooning away. 19) Italy boycotted the 1981 Eurovision Song contest, saying that it was too old fashioned. 20) Britain's Patricia Bredin had the right idea. Her song, All (1957), is the shortest song to have been performed in Eurovision history. All in all it lasted one minute and 52 seconds. 21) What's in a name right? Titles of songs that have won include Lulu's Boom Bang-a-Bang (UK, 1969), A-Ba-Ni-Bi (Israel, 1978) and Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley (1984). An odd name isn't, however, a passport to success as Sweden discovered in 1986 with E De Det Har Du Kallar Karlek.

Last year’s oddest title (and song), probably goes to France, who didn’t even attempt sincerity with the song ‘Moustache’ by TWIN TWIN. It’s about a guy who wants a moustache. 22) During the 1962 performance of Dutch duo, De Spelbrekers, the lights dramatically went out, leaving the amusing spectacle of two white shirts singing merrily away. Blessing in disguise? You decide. 23) Norway's 1980 song was about the construction of a hydro-electric power station. 24) The youngest winner was 13-year-old Sandra Kim from Belgium in 1986. 25) The first Eurovision Contest broadcast in colour was held at the Royal Albert Hall, in London, in 1968. 26) Domenico Modugno's song for Italy, Nel blu Dipinto di blu (1958), went on to win two Grammy Awards. Jemini's Cry Baby, Britain's 2003 nul pointer, didn't.

27) Danish singers Birthe Wilke and Gustav Winckler hold the record for the longest kiss during a Eurovision performance, lasting an impressive 32 seconds. A member of the production team forgot to give them the arranged signal to stop. That old chestnut. Birthe Wilke and Gustav Winckler share their 32 second kiss 28) More Eurovision winners have worn white (seven) than any other colour. 29) Aspiring male solo artists take note... 28 female solo artists have won in comparison to just seven men. 30) Watch out if your country performs second – no one has ever gone on to win from here.

Question: Which nation has won the Eurovision Song Contest more than any other?
Answer: Ireland